Blister packagings have become a widespread standard because of their cost-efficient manufacturing, their hygienic and air-tight properties and their ease of use, particularly for packaging pharmaceutical products such as tablets or coated tablets or nutritional supplements in many areas of use.
The ease of use, however, also permits small children to remove the tablets from the blister packaging, which leads to problems with respect to child safety, as children could confuse the medications with sweets. This problem is compounded by the fact that medicines for adults are also increasingly mixed with flavorings in order to make taking them easier to administer and to improve their acceptance.
Blister packagings are usually provided for distribution with an outer packaging, wherein outer packaging in the form of a bag is used in addition to the customarily known cardboard box. Bag packaging offers, among others, advantages in manufacturing because they can be printed in-line, for example, while carton packaging, by contrast, must be newly produced with every change in the print.
Countless solutions have been developed to make it harder for children to access the tablets packaged in the blister packagings. For example, WO007030067 A1 discloses a housing as an outer packaging for a blister packaging that only allows the removal of a tablet from the blister packaging if the blister packaging has previously been pushed from a safety position into a removal position. In this arrangement, the blister packaging is held in the safety position by an actuating mechanism. Only after releasing the actuating mechanism is it possible to push the blister packaging into the removal position.
Even if this solution offers a high measure of safety, it has some drawbacks. The housing is a relatively complex and expensive product that is individually adapted to just one specific tablet and packaging size. As a one-use item, the outer housing is very expensive. If the outer packaging is provided for multiple uses, after removing the last tablet, the user is himself responsible for placing a new, full blister packaging in the outer packaging and thereby securing it.
It is to be expected that many consumers would not comply with these safeguards and would remove the tablets directly from the blister packaging in the usual manner.
DE 10 2009 042858 A1 discloses an outer packaging for blister packagings, wherein the outer packaging protects the blister packaging against an inadvertent removal by children. The outer packaging is designed as a carton and is made of a plurality of layers in some cases designed to be elastic, wherein openings are made in at least one layer. The blister packaging is displaceably arranged in the outer packaging and a removal of the medication from the blister packaging is only possible if the openings of the blister are in alignment with the openings in the layer.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,150,793 discloses a device for preventing an inadvertent discharge from a blister packaging, wherein the blister packaging is displaceably arranged in a housing and can be moved over corresponding openings in the housing for removal. The housing can be made from plastic, cardboard or composite materials.